Japan disabled challenge stigma, barriers to run for upper house seat.
TOKYO - Eiko Kimura, who has cerebral palsy, did not even know how to buy train tickets when she chose to move out of a facility for the disabled and live in a Tokyo suburb at 19. She kept her head down to avoid rude stares from strangers then.
Kimura is one of two seriously disabled candidates running from a small opposition group. A larger opposition party is backing a hearing-impaired candidate. "Japan ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2014. Five years have passed since then, and we are finally starting to see tangible effects," Hosei University professor Satoko Shimbo said.
Two years later, Japan implemented a law requiring that"reasonable accommodation" be offered to meet the needs of the disabled. In a recent speech, Kimura referred to the killing of 19 people by a knife-wielding man at the Tsukui Yamayuri-En facility for mentally and physically disabled in 2016, Japan's worst mass killing in decades.
"Whatever takes place at the highest authority of the state will trickle down to other regions. This can be a great trigger for making progress in policy measures for the disabled," Yamamoto said.In another incident that casts doubt over Japan's progress on rights for the disabled, the central government was found last year to have falsely registered 3,700 employees to meet quotas for disabled workers, instead of hiring disabled people.
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